Miller: Labels and numbers help gauge election races

Published: Monday, May 5, 2014 9:27 p.m. CST

By Rich Miller

I commissioned a We Ask America poll on April 21 of the races for governor, comptroller and treasurer. But I forgot to put the candidates’ party labels in the poll’s questions. The results came out very weird.

The Topinka crosstabs were bizarre. The Republican was leading among Democrats 55-30, ahead in Chicago 57-23 and among African-Americans, 55-22. No way.

Garbage in, garbage out, as they say, so I dumped the poll and ran a new one on April 27. This time we identified the candidates’ party affiliations.

The results were strikingly different.

In the second, April 27 poll, which specifically told respondents which candidate was a Democrat and which was a Republican, the Republican Rauner and the Democrat Quinn were tied at 44 – an 11-point swing. Topinka still led big, but by a much more believable 51-38 – a 14-point swing. And Republican Cross’s lead over the Democrat Frerichs dropped to 41-37 – a nine-point swing.

Both polls had almost identical partisan breakdowns of respondents and both had similar margins of error, ±3.21 percent in the first poll and ±3.14 percent in the second.

The crosstabs show just how dramatically the results changed when voters were given candidate party labels.

The first poll, which didn’t give voters the candidates’ party labels, Rauner led 62-27 among Downstaters. But the second poll, which did include the partisan info, Rauner’s Downstate lead dropped to 52-33. Among whites, Rauner led, 57-33 in the first poll, but 51-38, in the second, when they knew which party the candidates belonged to.

The partisanship impact was even more clear with traditionally Democratic-leaning constituencies. Rauner’s recent TV ads have featured his Democratic wife, and the first poll found that Rauner actually led Quinn among women, 44-41, when women weren’t told which party he or Quinn represented. But when women did have that partisan information, they flipped big to Quinn in the second poll, 48-38.

When African-Americans weren’t told that Rauner was a Republican, he trailed Quinn, 55-22. But when black voters were given both candidates’ party labels, Quinn led Rauner, 70-19. That’s still not horrible for Rauner, but far more believable.

Rauner ran some Spanish-language TV ads after the primary was over, and the first poll, which didn’t tell Latino voters that he was a Republican, showed him winning that crucial demographic by 3 points, 37-34. But the second poll, which identified Rauner as a Republican, had Quinn winning Latinos, 52-36.

Let’s look at the Topinka numbers, which were what initially made me realize that I’d made a wording mistake. Topinka has been around for decades, and voters clearly like her. She’s also a liberal-leaning Republican, which makes her much more electable in Illinois.

But Topinka’s 55-30 lead over Simon among Democrats in the first poll was more than reversed to a 24-67 deficit when Democrats were told that Topinka was a Republican. Her initial 57-23 lead in Chicago and 55-22 margin among African-Americans were also reversed in the second poll, when she trailed Simon, 35-54, in the city and 29-58 among African-Americans. And her 55-28 lead among women dropped to 48-40 when voters knew that Simon was a Democrat and Topinka was a Republican.

Tom Cross is better known that Michael Frerichs because of his years as a legislative leader who lives in the Chicago media market and because he had a contested GOP primary race. Frerichs’ 26-19 lead among Democrats rose to a 68-11 lead when Democrats were given candidate party affiliation labels a week later.

The difference between the two polls is far more interesting to me than the actual results. It’s early. Results will change over time.

But if it wasn’t before, it’s now crystal clear that a large number of likely voters cast their ballots based on partisanship. And as a result the Republican Party faces a gigantic hurdle in Illinois. That’s probably not news to most of us, but at least now it’s somewhat quantifiable.

• Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.